Daniel T. Hickey
The announcement of the final awards in MacArthur’s Badges for Lifelong Learning competition on March 2 was quite exciting. It concluded one of the most innovative (and complicated) research competitions ever seen in education-related research. Of course there was some grumbling about the complexity and the reviewing process. And of course the finalists who did not come away with awards were disappointed. But has there ever been a competition without grumbling about the process or the outcome?
A Complicated Competition
The competition was complicated. There were over 300 initial submissions a few months back; a Teacher Mastery category was added at the last minute. Dozens of winners of Stage 1 (Content and Program) and Stage 2 (Design and Tech) went to San Francisco before the DML conference to pitch their ideas to a panel of esteemed judges.